McLellan after 3-2 shootout win over Ducks: ‘We have to tell it like it is – they were the better team’

The Sharks know they got away with one tonight. The best team didn’t win.

“We’ve got to be excited that we put points in the bank and were able to come back, but we have to tell it like it was – they were the better team,” Todd McLellan said. “It didn’t feel real good tonight with the flow of the game, the management of players. A lot of pieced things together, for lack of a better term. . . . It was a frustrating night, but at least we found a way to win.”

The 3-2 shootout victory came thanks to a goal by Mikhal Handzus (who is now 17 of 33 in shootouts for his career, according to one stat sheet circulating in the press box) while Antti Niemi was perfect against Bobby Ryan, Corey Perry and Teemu Selanne, who did hit a crossbar.

But it wouldn’t have gotten that far if it weren’t for a clutch goal by Logan Couture at 17:15 of the third period with the primary assist coming from Scott Gomez — his first point as a Shark.

Couture talks about the play in the print edition story already filed. Here’s what Gomez had to say.

“Clowe made a great play and you’ve got a kid like that who can put it in the net,” Gomez said. “It really wasn’t much. I just gave it to him and he did the rest. It was a goal we needed and we’ll take it.”

Dan Boyle’s absence — presumably the same cold/flu that kept him out of the morning skate but was not supposed to keep him out of the game — had to be part of any explanation for San Jose’s inability to generate much offense, especially in the first two periods.

But McLellan wasn’t going to single out the six defensemen who did play, including rookie Nick Petrecki was had 11:58 ice time in his first NHL game.

“”Boyle, Burns and Demers are all very good puck-moving offensive defensemen. I’m not going to put it on the six D that played,” the coach said. “I thought they played a hard game. There were opportunities where they could have moved the puck up and delivered the puck a little bit better, but the forwards play a role in that, as well. Overall we’ll take the lack of execution as a group, as a team, and we’ll move on and try to make it better.”

*****Niemi was pretty honest about what went wrong on that first goal. He didn’t expect a shot and was anticipating the next play when Francois Beuachemin banked it off the Sharks goalie and into the back of the net from a harsh angle.

*****The Sharks penalty kill had its third perfect game in a row, going 4-for-4. San Jose has now climbed to 12th in the NHL with an 81.2 percent success rate.

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.